


The Mist

by Overlithe



Series: Overlithe's avatar_500 ficlets [14]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Community: fanfic100, Dark, F/M, Gen, Immortality, Spiritual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-24
Updated: 2011-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-18 14:17:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Overlithe/pseuds/Overlithe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“No. It was always you. It has always been you.” Yue in the Day of Black Sun. Gen with some references to Sokka/Yue. Written for prompt 26 (glow) of the avatar_500 LJ comm and prompt 45 (moon) of the fanfic100 LJ comm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mist

**Author's Note:**

> Along with my ficlet _[Spirit-Bound](http://archiveofourown.org/works/178189)_ and the Yue segment in _[Cages](http://archiveofourown.org/works/180740)_ , this story is my attempt at exploring Yue’s transformation from a human into an immortal spirit utterly beyond our concepts of time and space (insofar as a human writer is able to explore that sort of thing ;)). You don’t have to read the other fics to understand this one, but they probably work best together. (You can also read them [here](http://overlithe.livejournal.com/163900.html) and [here](http://overlithe.livejournal.com/166606.html) at my LJ or [here](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6878935/1/Spirit_Bound) and [here](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6894965/1/Cages) at ff.net if you prefer.)

  
****  
The Mist   
  


 

She is a child. The mist frightens her. The other children tell ghost stories in shivering giggles as the night draws in. She is a little apart, always, but she laughs and pretends to be scared; later the stories rattle around their heads, make them clutch their furs tighter in their sleep. She tells no one about the mist, not even her mother. She knows it is only fog and ice, and there are no monsters, no glistening beaks the size of hulls, no tentacles ringed with fangs.

She is ageless. The mist cloaks her. Space bathes her, empty, soundless, and her light trickles to places where the seas are deep purple, the skies an alien orange. In the mist there are monsters, spirits with glistening beaks the size of hulls, tentacles ringed with fangs. She is unafraid.

Sokka clasps her hand by a pool murky with black blood. She can feel his heartbeat against her skin, can almost smell his sweat. He says, voice hoarse with failure, that her father told him to protect her. His fingers slip away into a world the colour of ashes.

Then so does everything else.

Sokka rushes across a city built on cold lava. She blocks the sun until there is only a rim of light and red roofs sink into shadow. Starlight at noon.

She is not aiding him. Rocks drift through space, unknowing, uncaring. A comet streaks through the sky. Below it, temples burn, the light nearly as bright as the sun. A comet streaks through the sky. Below it, the Avatar engulfs the Fire Lord in a light brighter than the sun.

In the mist, the Sun Spirit glides past her. Golden tendrils turn the black grass a radiant green, make the fruits hanging from claw-tipped trees beat like little hearts. _We’re dancing again_ , the other spirit says. Glowing red drips to the ground. The grass browns. The fruits shrivel to grey with a hiss like burning oil.

_It wasn’t me. It was the other Moon Spirit._

_No. It was always you. It has always been you_ , the Sun Spirit says, and she knows it’s right before the words end, has always known it’s right. She drifts above an ocean dotted with the mossy backs of Lion-Turtles. She watches as a volcano disgorges an ocean of radiant lava. Sunlight at midnight.

In the city built inside it, the Avatar and his friends are fleeing, too late, already too late even before she sinks the world into darkness. Too late when she slips her hand out of Sokka’s grip, too late when her parents hold her newborn body in a pool where, a thousand fathoms deep, spirits whisper.

In the mist, the Sun Spirit glides away from her, leaving an alien orange glow in its wake.

She drifts through space, knowing, unfeeling. She is telling Sokka she will always be with him. She is seeing a thousand of his lifetimes pass.

The air fills with moon dust.

 

++The End++

**Author's Note:**

>  _Notes/Disclaimer:_ The title of the story comes from the Stephen King novella/Frank Darabont movie of the same name. I’d say the whole deal with the Eldritch Abominations lurking in the mist in the Spirit World also comes from the same place if that bit weren’t actually AtLA canon. ;) The line “it was always you” comes from the film _Candyman_ , which is in turn an adaptation of Clive Barker’s short story The Forbidden.
> 
> And yeah, the more I think about it, the more Yue becoming the Moon Spirit turns into an And I Must Scream scenario. She obviously retains the memories from her human life, only they’re stuck in an immortal, eternal spirit, who is by definition apart from humanity, and who is drifting through space forever… and ever… and ever.
> 
> Well, I suppose she at least gets to hang out with the other spirits in the Spirit World, and observe all kinds of interesting astronomical phenomena. Upside! ;)


End file.
